Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [48]
They sat, as they usually did, in silence, absorbed by the game and the music.
Albert looked away from the screen and stared at his son, as if noticing him for the first time.
“Tomorrow’s the memorial,” Albert said, watching Harry Carson wrap an arm around the Eagles quarterback. “If you want, we can go together. No sense us taking two cars. Not in this weather.”
The sound of his father’s voice startled Bobby. He had grown comfortable with the wall of silence that surrounded them, not quite sure how to react to the sudden cracks conversation brought.
“You sure?” Bobby asked, lifting his legs from the coffee table, eyes on his father.
His father turned his head from the television, strong hands stretched across the tops of his legs. “I think it’s time for us to go together.”
“I usually stop off and pick up some flowers first,” Bobby said.
“Pink roses,” Albert said, nodding.
“I’m sorry, Pop,” Bobby said. “I’m sorry I took her away from you.”
Albert stared at his son, tears flowing from the corners of his eyes. “All these years I blamed you for what happened,” he said. “Now I think, maybe it needed to happen for things to right themselves. Maybe she put herself there thinkin’ it was the only way to get her son back.”
“The man that killed Mama,” Bobby said. “He’s dead.”
“I know,” Albert said.
“I killed him,” Bobby said.
“I know that too,” Albert said. “I don’t know how your mother would have felt about you doing somethin’ like that.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“I’m proud of you, Bobby,” Albert said, speaking his son’s name for the first time since his wife’s death.
• • •
THE CARDBOARD BOXES were torn and piled high in a corner, up against the steep wall of the tenement, mounds of dirty snow and torn plastic garbage bags lodged near their edges. A cold wind, whipping off corners and side streets, blew across their flaps.
Bobby Scarponi sat shivering under the mound of boxes, his back crunched against cold bricks. He had his hands wrapped around a coffee thermos and his legs were folded to his chest. He was wearing black jeans, two pullovers, and a thick blue windbreaker. A Red Sox baseball cap rested backward on his head. A hand radio sat by his side.
“You see anything yet?” From the warmth of a parked car around the corner, Detective Tony Clifton’s voice came crackling over the radio.
“Just my life flashing before my eyes,” Bobby muttered into the box, stretching out his legs and resting the warm thermos between them. “It’s early still. These guys never come out till the soap operas are done.”
“Caddy still parked down front?” Clifton asked.
“Empty and with the windows down.” Bobby stared across the deserted street at the late-model pea-green Cadillac with the Florida plates. “Been there all day.”
“That car sticks out like a set of tits,” Clifton said. “You’d think these guys would show some sense.”
“It ain’t a Mensa reunion, Tony,” Bobby said into the radio. “It’s a drug deal. Unless your stool gave us the wrong feed time.”
“My guy’s never been wrong,” Clifton said. “Just sit tight, Rev., and let the deal go down.”
“Must be warm where you are,” Bobby said, rubbing his hands across the tops of his legs.
“Like Miami in July,” Clifton said.
“Can’t wait till I’m old and slow like you, Tony. Then I can sit in a ratty car, breathing in hot, shitty air, while a real cop does all the work.”
“Tell you what, Rev. Jim,” Clifton said. “If it gets any colder, I’ll stop over at the liquor store and pick up some more boxes. Come around and toss ’em on your pile.”
“I got only two words for you, Tony,” Bobby said, his lower lip shaking. “Carbon monoxide.” Then his eyes shifted across the street. “We got movement,” he said into the radio.
Three men stood in a narrow doorway, hands inside their coat pockets, eyes scanning the silent street. The pea-green Cadillac